John Adams wrote the "right to keep and to bear arms" into the Massachusetts Constitution a decade before it appeared in the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

However, one cannot plausibly read it to say that the states, or the National Guard, have the right to keep and bear arms but the people do not. That would be rewriting the Constitution.

LAST week, when a federal appeals court ruled that the District of Columbia’s gun ban violates the right to “keep and bear arms,” The New York Times reported that the judges were … ...

First, Adams' understanding of the right to bear arms is fundamentally incompatible with New York's assertions in NYSRPA v. Bruen about the meaning of the Statute of Northampton and its analogs.

Then he noted the Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v.Heller in 2008 that the Second Amendment guaranteed an individual right to bear arms, and drew a parallel with the Court’s 1973 ...

The Right To Bear Arms March 10, 2008 / 3:58 PM EDT / US News Dick Heller, a longtime resident of the District of Columbia, carries a handgun for his job as a private security guard.